You’re going to get the hang of jQuery in less time than you might expect. And the knowledge will stick. Why? Because this isn’t just a book. It’s a book plus 1,500 free interactive online exercises. It’s the exercises that are going to turn you into a real jQuery coder. Cognitive research shows that reading alone doesn’t buy you much long-term retention. But if you read less and do more—if you read a short passage and then immediately put it into practice—everything changes. Washington University researchers say that being asked to retrieve information increases long-term retention by four hundred percent. Practice also makes learning more interesting. Ten minutes of reading followed by twenty minutes of practice keeps you awake and spurs you on. And it keeps you honest. If you only read, it’s easy to kid yourself that you’re learning more than you are. But when you’re challenged to produce the goods, there’s a moment of truth. You know that you know—or that you don’t. If you find you’re a little shaky on this point or that, you can review the material, then re-do the exercise. That’s all it takes to master this book from beginning to end.

A few years ago I set out to teach myself Web development by reading programming books. It was such a struggle that I decided I must have lost some learning ability over the years. Then it hit me... I wasn't a bad learner. The books were bad teachers! I fought my way through a dozen books, and by brute effort, learned to build websites. But I had to design exercises for myself. Without practice, I couldn't retain anything.

Coding, I learned, isn't that hard. The books make it hard. So I set out to write books that make learning to code easy. And, since exercises are the only way to make the knowledge stick, I've created, for each book, more than a thousand free interactive exercises online.

I'm a former lecturer in the Communications School of Boston University. I hold an A.B. from Harvard. My professional focus is on using simple language and interactive exercises to reduce the effort and tedium of learning. I run the website http://www.ASmarterWayToLearn.com.

Along with my wife Judy and our two politically-active cats, I live in Taos, NM, where I code for fun, cook under the ghostly supervision of Marcella Hazan, read extensively, and play showboat frisbee once a week.